06 September, 2017
The remnants of tropical storm Harvey drenched northern Louisiana on Thursday as it moved inland.
Harvey was able to maintain its strength by staying along the Texas coast until Tuesday, dumping copious amounts of rain in the Houston area.
The last of the plant's employees evacuated on Tuesday and residents within 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) were told to leave. "The plume is incredibly unsafe".
Others among the dead include a woman whose body was discovered floating in Beaumont, a man who stepped on a live electrical wire in floodwaters, and a woman who died after she and her young daughter were swept into a drainage canal in Beaumont. Some 32,000 people were forced into shelters around the region since Harvey came ashore on Friday near Rockport, Texas, as the most powerful hurricane to hit the state in a half-century.
Across the state, families are searching tirelessly for missing relatives on the sixth day since the catastrophic storm made its first landfall as a Category 4 hurricane.
Harvey is expected to weaken as it slogs through Louisiana and makes it way northward, with Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri on alert for flooding in the next couple of days. Large numbers of civilian volunteers also joined in the rescue effort.
But the worst-hit areas on Wednesday were eastern parts of Texas, including the city of Port Arthur which was nearly impossible to reach, despite the best efforts of volunteer rescues.
"You can't get anywhere by vehicle", said Troy Payne, 56, who had driven in from Atlanta. "The water levels are going down".
U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Paul Zukunft said emergency calls continued to come in at a rate of 1,000 per hour on Wednesday afternoon.
So far, parts of Texas have seen more than 50 inches (1.27 meters) of rain, while in Louisiana, the top total 18 inches so far was increasing.
Beaumont said it had lost its water supply due to flood damage to its main pumping station. The reservoir is about 20 miles (32kms) west of Houston.
"The more they release it could go up and it could create even additional problems", Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner warned.
Houston's two major airports were up and running again Wednesday.
"They were the last holdouts, the last house", said Dennis Landy, a neighbour who had spent the day in his ferrying people by boat from a small, remote group of houses near Rose City, Texas, close to the Neches' banks, to safety.
At a news conference in Washington, D.C., the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brock Long, told reporters that the plume was hazardous. They now estimate the probability of a shutdown at 35 percent, down from 50 percent previously.LARGEST U.S. REFINERY SHUTThe nation's largest refinery, Valero Energy Corp's 335,000 barrel-per-day facility in Port Arthur was shut, said sources familiar with plant operations.The storm has affected almost one-fifth of U.S. refining capacity, sparking concerns about gasoline supply. FEMA has served about 5 million meals, and the agency reported 210,000 people had registered for government assistance. Some 500,000 barrels of oil will be delivered to a Phillips 66 refinery in Louisiana unaffected by the storm, an Energy Department spokeswoman said in a statement.
Those increases have not made it to the pump yet, with the national average price for gasoline up just six cents in the past week, to $2.40 a gallon, but analysts say it could rise above $2.80 a gallon or more, depending on refinery damage.
Moody's Analytics is estimating the economic cost from Harvey for southeast Texas at $51 billion to $75 billion, ranking it among the costliest storms in USA history.
The flooding in southeast Texas has severely affected oil and chemical plants.
Governor Greg Abbott warned that floodwaters would linger for up to a week. New Orleans - which was devastated by 2005's Hurricane Katrina - is not in the storm's direct path, according to forecasters.
United States vice president Mike Pence and several cabinet secretaries will travel to Texas on Thursday to meet residents affected by the storm.
